Found a potential donor... need info regarding testing paynebt

[GonePostalWV]

Hello all,

New here and thought I'd drop in and ask a question first off.

I have been on the transplant list for two years.. waiting on the
phone call.  Out of the blue, my best friend from childhood got
word of my need... and called offering to donate.

His blood type matches, so now we're to the bloodtesting stage.
My problem is, my private insurance only pays for the actual donor,
not "potential" donors.  Researching online, It appears that medicare
will pay for the testing, but when I called them asking about it, they
have no clue.

I'm sure several folks online here have been thru the procedure and
may know what steps I need to take.  Is it as simple as fax him a
copy of my medicare card ?  Once he recieves the test tube packed
from my transplant coordinator, does he just take it and the card to
Quest or Labcorp along with my card, and lifes good ?

Any help is appreciated.  Feel free to email me direct with any responses.
GonePostalWV@gmail.com

Thanks in advance.

[Fr Pat]

     Hi. Have you asked your Transplant Coordinator about this? She/he deals with this all the time and should be able (with the Social Worker) to give you clear guidelines. Please let us know how things turn out.
  best wishes,
      Fr. Pat

[lawphi]

Your coordinator will give you a packet for your donor to complete. Your insurance should pay for the initial testing to determine if your donor is a suitable match and healthy. If I recall, the insurance company will only pay for one person to have the tests at a time until the donor is ruled out.

[Orchidlady]

Don't try to sort this out on your own - it is a nightmare! As others have said, that is what the coordinator, financial team and social worker are for. The center you are working through should be talking to the potential donor to work out the financial end. In our case, the private insurance we had was through my group health at work, and medicare was secondary. The private insurance paid for my husband and medicare paid for my tests and surgery as the donor. It was seamless - we gave the center the information up front and they handled everything. We never saw a single bill.  Call your coordinator and discuss the situation with them - I bet they will have your problem solved very quickly.

Best of luck, and hope all works out for you!

[GonePostalWV]

Thanks for the info and help everybody,

I'll contact my transplant team today.  Part of my confusion is from
my private insurance side of things.  We have a transplant coordinator
that's supposed to help me with things like this, but mine for the past
two years recently received a promotion to management, and I'm breaking
in a new one.... just haven't worked out good communications with her yet.

I'm trying not to be too optimistic about the chances of my potential donor
being a match.... but for some reason I have a really good feeling about the
situation.

[Scott337]

Praying for you and your potential donor - keep a GOOD thought.  Best wishes and keep us informed.


Scott   

[treehugger]

His blood type matches, so now we're to the bloodtesting stage.
My problem is, my private insurance only pays for the actual donor,
not "potential" donors.  Researching online, It appears that medicare
will pay for the testing, but when I called them asking about it, they
have no clue.

My husband was on the The List for about 4.5 years when we had a couple of offers from friends to get tested (this was before we knew about paired exchange). Our insurance at the time would not pay for testing of potential donors until my husband was on dialysis. We believe that BC/BS (yes, I'm naming names) wanted to stall until Medicare would have to foot the bill; Medicare gets involved once dialysis is started. Anyway, we were out of luck until I switched jobs and consequently switched insurance (to Kaiser) and suddenly we got approval to test potential donors.

Obviously all insurance plans and companies are different and you should definitely reach out to the transplant facility you are registered with for assistance, but I did want to say that this is a real problem for potential recipients under our current health care system.

Have you started dialysis yet?

Good luck!

Kara